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Enclave and exclave
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In political geography, an enclave is a territory whose geographical boundaries lie entirely within the boundaries of another territory.
An exclave, on the other hand, is a territory legally attached to another territory with which it is not physically contiguous.
These are two distinct concepts, although many entities fit both definitions.
In Fig.
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Encyclopedia
In political geography, an enclave is a territory whose geographical boundaries lie entirely within the boundaries of another territory.
An exclave, on the other hand, is a territory legally attached to another territory with which it is not physically contiguous.
These are two distinct concepts, although many entities fit both definitions.
In Fig. 1 at right, C is an exclave of B, and is also an enclave within A. If C were independent it would be an enclave but not an exclave.
In Fig. 2 at right, D is again an exclave of B, but is not an enclave, because it has boundaries with more than one country.
Origin and usage
The word enclave crept into the jargon of diplomacy rather late in English, in 1868, coming from French, the lingua franca of diplomacy, with a sense inherited from late Latin inclavatus meaning 'shut in, locked up" (with a key, late Latin clavis). The word exclave is a logical extension created three decades later.
Although the meanings of both words are close, an exclave may not necessarily be an enclave or vice versa. For example, Kaliningrad, an exclave of Russia, is not an enclave because it is surrounded not by one state, but by two: Lithuania and Poland; it also borders the Baltic Sea. On the other hand, Lesotho is an enclave in South Africa, but it is not politically attached to anything else, meaning that it is not an exclave.
In British administrative history, subnational enclaves were usually called detachments. In English ecclesiastic history, subnational enclaves were known as peculiars (see also Royal Peculiar).
A country surrounded by another but having access to the sea is not considered to be an enclave, regardless of size. For this reason, in the same way that Portugal is not an enclave of Spain, The Gambia is not an enclave of Senegal.
Usage in other fields
In medicine, an exclave is a detached part of an organ, as of the pancreas, thyroid, or other gland.
Characteristics
Enclaves may be created for a variety of historical, political or geographical reasons. Some areas have been left as enclaves by changes in the course of a river.
Since living in an enclave can be very inconvenient and many agreements have to be found by both countries over mail addresses, power supply or passage rights, enclaves tend to be eliminated and many cases that existed before have now been removed.
Many exclaves today have an independence movement, especially if the exclave is far away from the mainland.
True enclaves
- See List of enclaves and exclaves.
This refers to those territories where a country is sovereign, but which cannot be reached without entering one particular other country. One example was West Berlin, before the reunification of Germany, which was de facto a West German exclave within East Germany, and thus an East German enclave (many small West Berlin land areas, such as Steinstücken, were in turn separated from the main one, some by only a few meters). De jure all of Berlin was ruled by the four Allied powers; this meant that West Berlin could not send voting members to the German Parliament, and that its citizens were exempt from conscription. Most of the enclaves now existing are to be found in Asia, with a handful in Africa and Europe. While administrative enclaves are found frequently elsewhere, there are no nation-level enclaves in Australia or the Americas.
Enclaved countries
Some enclaves are countries in their own right, completely surrounded by another one, and therefore not exclaves. Three such sovereign countries exist:
See also List of countries that border only one other country.
Temporary enclaves
The Scottish Court in the Netherlands, at Camp Zeist near Utrecht, was temporarily declared as sovereign territory of the United Kingdom under Scottish law for the duration of the trial and subsequent appeal of those accused in the Lockerbie bombing, and was therefore an exclave of the United Kingdom, specifically Scotland, and an enclave within the Netherlands. The court was first convened in 1999, and the land returned to the Netherlands in 2002.
Related constructs and terms
"Practical" enclaves and exclaves and inaccessible districts
Some territories, attached to the motherland by a thin slice of land or territorial water, are more easily accessible by traveling through a foreign country. These territories may be called "practical exclaves" or "pene-exclaves" (example: Angle Inlet between US and Canada.)
Conversely, a territory that is an exclave but does not function as one (instead functioning as a contiguous part of the main nation) is deemed a "quasi-exclave".
Subnational enclaves and exclaves
Sometimes, administrative divisions of a country, for historical or practical reasons, caused some areas to belong to a division while being attached to another one.
Ethnic enclaves
An ethnic enclave is a community of an ethnic group inside an area in which another ethnic group predominates. Ghettos, Little Italys, barrios and Chinatowns are examples. These areas may have a separate language, culture and economic system.
Extraterritoriality
Embassies and military bases are usually exempted from the jurisdiction of the host country, i.e., the laws of the host nation in which an embassy is located do not typically apply to the land of the embassy or base itself. This exemption from the jurisdiction of the host country is defined as extraterritoriality. Areas of extraterritoriality are not true enclaves as they are still part of the host country. In addition to embassies some other areas have extraterritoriality.
Examples of this include:
Land ceded to a foreign country
Some areas of land in a country are owned by another country and in some cases it has special privileges, such as being exempt from taxes. These lands are not enclaves and do not have extraterritoriality.
Examples of this include:
- Napoleon's original grave in Longwood, Saint Helena, ceded to France.
- Victor Hugo's house in St Peter Port, Guernsey, ceded to the city of Paris.
- The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France which contains the graves of 9,386 American military dead, most of whom gave their lives during the landings and ensuing operations of World War II, ceded to the United States of America.
- About 24 m² of land that surrounds the Suvorov memorial near Göschenen in central Switzerland, ceded to Russia.
- The Vimy Memorial in France, which commemorates the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The French government permanently ceded a land area of about 1 km² to Canada as a war memorial in 1922 in recognition of Canada's military contributions in World War I in general and at Vimy Ridge in particular.
- Numerous Commonwealth WW I cemeteries in Belgium, of which the territory is ceded to the respective country.
- The land under the John F. Kennedy memorial at Runnymede, United Kingdom. Land ceded to the United States of America by the John F. Kennedy Memorial Act, 1964.
- Two cemeteries on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the United States of America ceded to the United Kingdom. Both contain the graves of British sailors killed in U-Boat attacks during World War II.
- James Cook's grave on Hawaii, United States of America, ceded to the United Kingdom.
- Ernst Thälmann Island; a Cuban island ceded by Fidel Castro in perpetuity to the German Democratic Republic in 1972. Current status is unclear since the GDR's absorption into the reunited Germany.
- The Jaber Castle also known as "Türk's Tomb" (Turkish: Türk Mezari) in Syria is the grave of Suleyman Shah (Turkish: Süleyman Sah). He was father of Ertugrul, who was in turn, the father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. The land is ceded to Turkey by the Treaty of Ankara signed between Turkey and France on 20 October 1921. Turkey has the right to have a squad/section of the army and to hoist the Turkish flag.
- A portion of the CERN campus in France along the French-Swiss border, administered by Switzerland.
National railway passing through foreign territory
Changes in borders can make a railway that was previously located solely within a country traverse the new borders. Since railways are much more expensive than roads to rebuild to avoid this problem, the criss-cross arrangement tends to last a long time. With passenger trains this may mean that doors on carriages are locked and guarded to prevent illicit entry and exit while the train is momentarily in another country.
Examples include:
- Salzburg to Innsbruck (Austria) (passes Rosenheim, Germany). A railway line within Austria exists as well, but trains take about 1.5 hours longer than across German territory.
- Trains from Neugersdorf, Saxony to Zittau pass Czech territory at Varnsdorf, while Czech trains from Varnsdorf to Chrastava pass through German territory at Zittau, and then a small part of Polish territory near the village of Porajów.
- Trains from Görlitz to Zittau, Germany, pass several times the border river Neisse (see Oder-Neisse line); the train station for Ostritz, Germany, lies in Krzewina Zgorzelecka, Poland.
- Belgrade - Bar railway crosses into Bosnia and Herzegovina for 9 km, between stations Zlatibor and Priboj (both in Serbia). There is one station, Štrpci, but there are no border crossing facilities and trains do not call at the station.
- During the era of the Iron Curtain, local trains between the north and south of Burgenland in Austria operated as "corridor trains" (Korridorzüge) along the border with Hungary – they had their doors locked as they traversed Hungarian territory (Gyor-Sopron County [as it was then]).
- The line from Ventimiglia Italy to Limone Piemonte Italy via Breil sur Roya France
- Similarly, during the Cold War, underground lines in West Berlin ran under parts of East Berlin. Ghost stations were stations on Berlin's U-Bahn and S-Bahn metro networks that were closed during this period of Berlin's division.
- The Belgian Vennbahn lies on a narrow strip of Belgian territory running through Germany, creating 5 German exclaves.
- The railway between France and Monaco briefly leaves France to enter Monaco before entering France once more. This takes place underground for around 150 metres.
- The former Soviet Central Asian Republics have numerous examples.
- Semikhody - Chernihiv line of Ukraine passes through Belarus territory.
- Druzhba - Vorozhba line of Ukraine passes through Russian territory.
Also, borders have occasionally been shifted for the purpose of avoiding this sort of arrangement. The best-known example is the Gadsden Purchase, in which the United States bought land from Mexico on which it was planned to build a southern route for the transcontinental railroad. Owing to the topography of the area, acquisition of the land was the only feasible way to construct such a railroad through the southern New Mexico Territory.
National highway passing through foreign territory
This arrangement is less common as highways are more easily re-aligned as noted above. Examples include:
- Congo Pedicle road: built to provide access for Zambia's Luapula Province to the Copperbelt through 70 km of territory of the DR Congo, requiring a change in driving on the left to driving on the right.
- Between 1963 and 2002 the N274 road from Roermond to Heerlen, part of Dutch territory, passed through the German Selfkant, which had been annexed by the Netherlands after the Second World War but returned to Germany in 1963.
Border infrastructure
Several bridges cross the rivers Oder and Neisse between Germany and Poland. To avoid needing to coordinate their efforts on a single bridge, the two states assign each bridge to one or the other; thus Poland is responsible for all maintenance on some of the bridges, including the German side, and vice versa.
See also
External links
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